Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

I can confirm what Deputy Bruton said.

Obviously, we welcome the introduction of a right to statutory sick leave in this country. It is a good thing that we are going to have it, even if it is extremely overdue and even if it is a lot less than what we need to have and what workers deserve in this country. Ireland has been an extreme outlier in not providing any statutory sick leave. This is also the case in terms of the lack of the right to collective bargaining or trade union recognition. It is striking that it took a global pandemic to force the Government to act in the very meagre way that it is acting in terms of the stipulated three days and so on but we still welcome the introduction of statutory sick leave.

What is offered now and what is being presented in the Bill falls extremely short of what is needed. What is provided for in the Bill is three days of paid leave. The Tánaiste said that Government will respond and will tell us not to worry, that it is going to increase it and that it has a plan to increase it initially to five days and eventually to ten days. The truth is that if the Bill passes unamended, we only have the Tánaiste's and the Government’s word on that. We have no guarantee that that will ever happen. When you look at the Bill and at the very wide loophole open to this Government, or to future governments, not to follow up and increase the number of paid sick leave days raises a serious concern.

Section 6(1) states that in considering whether to increase the number of statutory sick days, the Minister will have regard to, “the state of the economy generally, the business environment and national competitiveness”. It also refers to “the potential for any disproportionate or other adverse impact on the economy generally, specific sectors of the economy, employers or employees” and “the views of employer representative bodies”. I cannot imagine the employer representative bodies will be very fond of increasing the number of days. There is no guarantee here that we will ever go up from the three days. If it passes unamended, it will require significant continued pressure from the trade union movement to at least ensure we get the ten days by 2025, as promised by the Department during the pre-legislative scrutiny.

Let us imagine even that we get there and that we get to the ten days of paid leave. We will still be far behind what is normal in much of Europe. If we take the example of Austria, which is a similar-sized country to Ireland, workers are entitled to between ten and 16 weeks, not days, of paid sick leave on 100% pay. In the Netherlands, workers are entitled to receive 70% of their wages for up to two years when they are on sick leave.

Another point is the level of sick pay that is being proposed here. Again, for some reason, it is not contained within the Bill itself. However, what the Government said will be introduced will be 70% of pay up to a maximum of €110 a day. Therefore, what we are starting with and the only guarantee in the Bill is that workers can get a maximum of €330 in sick pay a year in the first year of this scheme. That is less than a week's worth of the enhanced illness benefit, which has been widely and correctly criticised for being too little for many low-paid workers to avoid falling behind on rent and bills.

In reality, many workers who are able to avail of this scheme will be entitled to significantly less than €330. That is because many of the workers with no access to sick pay at the moment are low-paid or minimum-wage workers who earn much less than the national median weekly earnings on which the €110 ceiling is based. If we take the example of a full-time minimum wage worker, they will be entitled to only €171.36 in sick pay a year. That is what they will get in the first year of this scheme. Out of that, we know that they are going to have to pay the €50, or, more likely these days, €60 cost of getting a mandatory medical certificate from a doctor each time they are sick. Therefore, if they are sick three times, on three separate days, effectively that money is all wiped out. It is worth absolutely nothing to them.

There is also no provision in the Bill for index linking sick pay to the spiralling cost of living. This is the biggest political issue right now. The biggest issue in society for people is how all their costs are going through the roof. It was reported during pre-legislative scrutiny that this could be provided for by ministerial order. Again, if it is the intention to do that, why do not we have that in the Bill before us? Why do we not ensure that it is going to happen?

Instead of setting arbitrary limits on the level of sick pay that workers are entitled to, every worker should be entitled to nothing less than 100% of their full wages for every day that they are sick. It is a basic issue in terms of respect, decency and decent conditions for workers. If the Tánaiste does not accept that, and if employers are going to insist on medical certificates and if the Government is going to back that up, then, at the very least, workers should not be left paying for those medical certificates. We think that employers should have to pay for medical certificates and, failing that, the State should intervene and assist with the costs.

We oppose this idea of having a mandatory requirement for sick pay certificates. It is in the Bill, I think, as a sop to employers who hope that the requirement to get a sick certificate would discourage people from staying at home when they are sick. Is that what we want to achieve? Do we want there to be continued pressure for people to go into work when they are sick? Do we want that to happen at a time when we have been through two years of a pandemic of a highly infectious disease, and when we know that in certain workplaces workers felt the pressure to go in to work when they were sick? That potentially had catastrophic effects in terms of the spreading of Covid-19 workplaces. We all heard the stories of workers taking paracetamol to bring their temperatures down to ensure they could work even though they were sick.

Why on earth would we make it difficult for workers to claim sick pay? The evidence is that workers are not working because they want to scam the system and are going to pretend they are sick all the time or whatever. The evidence is not there. For example, if you look at the experience in the in the public sector, it is not some widespread problem. Why on earth is the Government forcing people to risk spreading infectious diseases at the doctor’s surgery and on public transport on the way to the doctor’s surgery, just so that they can access sick pay?

The final criticism I would make is similar to the point made by Deputy Bruton about the requirement to be in employment with the same employer for 13 continuous weeks. The effect of that is to exclude many of the most vulnerable workers the Government claims to be trying to protect. There is no rationale for it. We do not say workers are worthy of fewer protections in other spheres of their working rights because they have only been working in a place for a certain amount of time.

Why on earth would we deny them the right to sick pay in the first three months of their work? ICTU has highlighted how this will hit women and migrant workers in particular. Congress wrote to the Tánaiste and pointed out that this provision will leave hundreds of thousands of mostly women and foreign-born essential workers employed in low paid jobs, who routinely have their service broken by their employer, without coverage for three months each year. This happens all of the time in childcare, for example, when workers, who are 98% female, are let go over the summer holidays and then rehired in September. They will lose out on protection in two periods throughout the course of the year. It will also hit young workers, more than one third of whom are on temporary contracts. People cannot choose not to get sick because they have started a new job, are on a temporary contract or because their employer has broken their service. Again, it will just mean that there are more workers and in this case, vulnerable workers, who feel under pressure to go into work when they are sick. That is not good for the individual worker but it is also not good for his or her co-workers or for society at large to have those sorts of pressures existing, which is precisely the logic behind introducing sick pay.

Every worker must be entitled to full sick pay on 100% of wages from day one. That should be the basic position and the number of statutory sick leave days must be radically increased to cover every day a worker is sick. This is not over, from our point of view. Obviously, there has been a lot of discussion on this in the Oireachtas committee and we will be putting forward amendments, as I am sure others will, to try to improve this Bill to ensure that workers get the best sick pay legislation possible.

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